It is hardly a revelation to say that words have power. They can delight, inform, edify, inspire and destroy. Unfortunately, it is the the latter effect that we see all too frequently today. One only has to look at the various cesspools to be found on social media to see this in action, and the tragic results of depraved online bullying. No one is immune.
And what is true about the misuse of language by individuals is also true of countries. In her most recent column, Shree Paradkar points out how the Israel's insidious misuse seems designed to obscure its atrocities in Gaza.
Who are Palestinians in Gaza? The Israeli government and its supporters would have us believe they are anything but innocent civilians.
This is important. Denying the innocence of the thousands killed during Israel’s onslaught allows its leaders to justify civilian deaths or to proffer a rationalization that “they brought it on themselves,” while blaming everything on Hamas.
Conflating all Palestinians with the evil of Hamas allows for the dehumanization of all Gazans, essentially equating the citizens with terrorism.
Former Mossad chief Rami Igra told CNN's Anderson Cooper last month that “The ‘non-combatant population in the Gaza Strip’ is really a non-existent term. Because all of the Gazans voted for Hamas. And as we have seen on the 7th of October, most of the population on the Gaza Strip are Hamas.”
Cooper didn’t push back, but this is blatantly untrue. There have been no elections in Gaza since 2006, when Hamas won with 44 per cent of the vote, and in no district did it win a majority. Today, nearly half the population of Gaza is under 18; they were either not born when Hamas came into power or not eligible to cast a ballot then. It means only a fraction of today's Gazans ever voted for Hamas.
Such a tact means that Israel can justify all manner of war crimes.
It allowed for Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to refer to Palestinians and Hamas militants as “human animals.” And for Israel’s ambassador to Berlin, Ron Prosor, to double down on those comments and say the western world must stand with Israel as it fights the “bloodthirsty animals” of Hamas, who are used interchangeably with Gazans.
Accepting that premise means that we should not care what happens to Gazans, thereby justifying
attacks on targets such as hospitals and schools that are protected by humanitarian law by claiming that they are in fact “military infrastructure.” Israeli evidence of Hamas using hospitals and schools as hideouts and bases has not been independently corroborated and remains contentious. But whatever the truth, Israel and its supporters use these claims to absolve themselves of any responsibility for civilian casualties.
All who accept such premises really become complicit in the ongoing slaughter, and no clever linguistic nuances or semantics can change that fact.
George Orwell many years ago warned us about the political use of language. Sadly, it would seem that whatever lessons he tried to impart are long forgotten today.
